Network Controller Sideband Interfaces are in accordance with the Standard, “DMTF Document Number: DSP0222, Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) Specification, Version 1.0.1, Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF), Jan. 24, 2013”, this document incorporated by reference in its entirety herein, hereinafter known as “the DMTF DSP0222 Standard”, provides for Network Controller devices to add additional events to those which are already includes in the DMTF DSP0222 Standard. The DMTF DSP0222 Standard allocated a range of enable control bits within the standard commands and a range of message types was allocated to allow more events to be added, in addition to the events defined in the NC-SI standard.
Presently, the DMTF DSP0222 Standard is such that multiple vendors of multiple devices may be using the same enable control bits and/or the same message types for different messages. This results in situations where the same notification and event type is subject to different interpretations when the message originates from devices of different vendors. Also, the same notification enable bits can control different message types.
As an attempt to resolve this potential problematic situation, server management controllers in a platform that uses multiple devices from different vendors, lookup mechanisms were used to convert notifications according to the device vendor. This lookup mechanism complicated management controller operations, as it added processing complexity and time, according to the device vendor. However, without a lookup mechanism, the management controller was unable to correctly interpret various events. This prevented certain combinations of devices from different vendors to be used in some systems.